Warner and Universal were the two labels Apple was reportedly in close negotiations with as of April 2013. The deal with Universal was for recorded music rights but not music publishing. The partnership with Warner this weekend includes both aspects. On the other hand, Sony Music Entertainment (with artists like Taylor Swift and Lady Gaga) still does not have any type of agreement with Apple set in place. While rumors about the company finally launching a music initiative have heated up within the last year, the idea has been discussed for more than six years at this point. Perhaps Google beating Apple to market with a subscription service will speed everything up.

Officials from Apple and Warner declined to comment to both CNET and The New York Times. CNET, however, was willing to speculate this deal suggests Apple is pushing to have any "iRadio" creations ready for WWDC. That event begins on June 10 in San Francisco. Although it sold out in a record two minutes this year, Ars will be on hand to report on whatever Apple may be unveiling.

32 Reader Comments

I'm probably wrong, but isn't this market pretty saturated? I'm a Google whore, but I'm not touching play music because I'm bought into the Spotify ecosystem. It'll have to be really great to convince the change.

I'm probably wrong, but isn't this market pretty saturated? I'm a Google whore, but I'm not touching play music because I'm bought into the Spotify ecosystem. It'll have to be really great to convince the change.

I'm probably wrong, but isn't this market pretty saturated? I'm a Google whore, but I'm not touching play music because I'm bought into the Spotify ecosystem. It'll have to be really great to convince the change.

what ecosystem? its just one app right?

One app with playlists and such synced across all my devices (tablet, phone, laptop, desktop). Can tell it to make a playlist available for offline use from my laptop and automatically downloads it to my phone so I can listen on a plane or something. There's a lot of value there.

I'm probably wrong, but isn't this market pretty saturated? I'm a Google whore, but I'm not touching play music because I'm bought into the Spotify ecosystem. It'll have to be really great to convince the change.

A lot if people are bought into the Apple ecosystem, so this is intended to increase those huge numbers.

Plus, I don't think Spotify (and Pandora) are profitable businesses. They are either going to get bought out or they'll be forced to change the attractive pricing that drives their membership, or both.

I'm probably wrong, but isn't this market pretty saturated? I'm a Google whore, but I'm not touching play music because I'm bought into the Spotify ecosystem. It'll have to be really great to convince the change.

A lot if people are bought into the Apple ecosystem, so this is intended to increase those huge numbers.

Plus, I don't think Spotify (and Pandora) are profitable businesses. They are either going to get bought out or they'll be forced to change the attractive pricing that drives their membership, or both.

Pandora has been around long enough that I assume it's profitable. It would have folded a while ago otherwise. Plus, who knows what they get in terms of ad revenue.

Thing is, not everyone using an Apple product is going to use their radio player. Can't really imagine people without Apple devices using it, unless it's tightly coupled with I tunes. Just feel like Apple is late to the game.

I really wish there was a practical way to make it so that recording studious could license out their music, BUUUUT they had to have the same public fixed price for everyone. If you want stream BMG music, awesome, their price is 1 cent a song for streaming, or whatever. They can't offer a different price to anyone else.

It kills me that the vast majority of the recorded music to exist in the past 50 years is sitting there in a digital format, and you need to have more money than god in order to build a service to access it. Four people who know how to program could offer up a streaming music service, only the licensing and lawyering prevents it from happening. You need to have as much money as Apple or Google to stand half a shot at lawyering up enough to work out a contract, much less pay it

The same is true for cell phones. All of those components are trivial. Any idiot could put together the components to make a home build cell phone, and any silicon valley startup could offer custom built phones with interesting shapes and features loaded with your favorite open source OS at only a marginally larger price than Samsung or Apple. Instead, you need to literally have billions of dollars to jump into the cell phone market field, because if you don't you will be skullfucked by lawyers the second they realize you don't have a 10,000 patents to use defensively.

Lawyers* make me sick. They do vastly more harm to the growth of technology than any luddite, bad education, or lack of science funding could ever dream of doing.

*Half of all US politicians are lawyers, so before pointing to the laws, realize lawyers right the laws that were drafted by lobbyist (who are also generally corporate lawyers).

I'm probably wrong, but isn't this market pretty saturated? I'm a Google whore, but I'm not touching play music because I'm bought into the Spotify ecosystem. It'll have to be really great to convince the change.

A lot if people are bought into the Apple ecosystem, so this is intended to increase those huge numbers.

Plus, I don't think Spotify (and Pandora) are profitable businesses. They are either going to get bought out or they'll be forced to change the attractive pricing that drives their membership, or both.

Pandora has been around long enough that I assume it's profitable. It would have folded a while ago otherwise. Plus, who knows what they get in terms of ad revenue.

Thing is, not everyone using an Apple product is going to use their radio player. Can't really imagine people without Apple devices using it, unless it's tightly coupled with I tunes. Just feel like Apple is late to the game.

I'm a big user of Google products and Android but I don't care for their streaming music service and will cancel it before my 30 day free is up.

With Google Radio you can only pick one artist/genre to create a radio station. With Pandora I have 4 artists from 4 different genres and get great music most of the time. I did email Google my request and they replied with a thanks we're always looking for new ideas but even with it I want free with ads something closer to Pandora Plus.

I was hoping Google would be free as well. I don't mind listening to an Ad every 15 minutes or so with the great mix of music I get.

What iRadio (or whatever it will be released as) brings to the offering will only likely be advantages as it brings more competition, which only gives a better product for the end user.

For me personally, Pandora is the only streaming service that is on my stereo receiver, satellite box, tablet, mobile phone and computer all with the same log in.

I think everyone has their own personal preference in what they want out of a service so it's tough to make everyone happy.

I'm probably wrong, but isn't this market pretty saturated? I'm a Google whore, but I'm not touching play music because I'm bought into the Spotify ecosystem. It'll have to be really great to convince the change.

what ecosystem? its just one app right?

One app with playlists and such synced across all my devices (tablet, phone, laptop, desktop). Can tell it to make a playlist available for offline use from my laptop and automatically downloads it to my phone so I can listen on a plane or something. There's a lot of value there.

Just fyi, google music does this as well. I was hesitant for all the same reasons you listed but after trying it for a week decided to make the switch. It's worth looking if only because it's 1 less login and cheaper.Edit: can't type wow.

I don't understand the use case for Pandora, iRadio, Spotify or any of these services. I like having my music on my iPhone for things like my recent international flight and at office where there's barely any 3G service, or when I'm on public transport.

I've used Pandora on and off in the past but I didn't particularly care for the songs it was playing. Then I thought why do I need to put up with crappy music I hate when I can have the music I love 24/7 on my iPod/iPhone.

Can someone explain this to me further? Why do you use Pandora or whatnot? Do you use it in parallel with something like an iPod? Do you have thousands of songs or just couple dozen CD's? I tend to listen to a huge variety of music and have some 3000+ tracks that won't even fit on my 32 GB anymore. How do you deal with situations such as international flights, spotty internet, etc? Do you use it just for music discovery?

I don't understand the use case for Pandora, iRadio, Spotify or any of these services. I like having my music on my iPhone for things like my recent international flight and at office where there's barely any 3G service, or when I'm on public transport.

I've used Pandora on and off in the past but I didn't particularly care for the songs it was playing. Then I thought why do I need to put up with crappy music I hate when I can have the music I love 24/7 on my iPod/iPhone.

Can someone explain this to me further? Why do you use Pandora or whatnot? Do you use it in parallel with something like an iPod? Do you have thousands of songs or just couple dozen CD's? I tend to listen to a huge variety of music and have some 3000+ tracks that won't even fit on my 32 GB anymore. How do you deal with situations such as international flights, spotty internet, etc? Do you use it just for music discovery?

I also prefer having a local copy of music. However, I have been using Rdio (subscription service similar to Spotify) for about a year as a supplement. I use it to listen to new work by artists that I like, to explore genres in which I have interest but little knowledge, and to explore music based on people I follow. A good value for $10 a month, since I can now only buy CDs/downloads that I am sure I like. It has also been nice to be able to stream some music I have some nostalgic affection for, but would never buy. The other bonus is that I can be more relaxed about not having our 125+ GB music library synced to some device (iPod or laptop) - most of what is not on my phone is available on Rdio.

I don't understand the use case for Pandora, iRadio, Spotify or any of these services. I like having my music on my iPhone for things like my recent international flight and at office where there's barely any 3G service, or when I'm on public transport.

I've used Pandora on and off in the past but I didn't particularly care for the songs it was playing. Then I thought why do I need to put up with crappy music I hate when I can have the music I love 24/7 on my iPod/iPhone.

Can someone explain this to me further? Why do you use Pandora or whatnot? Do you use it in parallel with something like an iPod? Do you have thousands of songs or just couple dozen CD's? I tend to listen to a huge variety of music and have some 3000+ tracks that won't even fit on my 32 GB anymore. How do you deal with situations such as international flights, spotty internet, etc? Do you use it just for music discovery?

Personally, I use services like this so that I can listen to a wide variety of music without having to pay for each track. So a cross between music discovery and music variety. I have a pretty large library (about 30 GB) of stuff that I've bought, but sometimes you want to listen to new stuff. Also, I can preview an album before a I pay for it or listen to tracks that I kind of like, but wouldn't want to pay for since I'll probably get tired of it. Right now, I'm trying out Google's music subscription service but I used to use Spotify and before that Rhapsody. Basically the draw is that you can listen to pretty much any song you want to whenever you want to. Google music lets you download any track to your phone (I guess you have to have an Android phone in order to do this, which I do), so it's still available for situations where you don't have Internet, in addition to whatever tracks from your own library you already have downloaded to your phone. And even though my entire library won't fit on my phone, I can still listen to it from my phone if I have a Internet connection. So since I've started using music subscription services, I've stopped buying music unless I absolutely know I like it and want to own it.

I don't understand the use case for Pandora, iRadio, Spotify or any of these services. I like having my music on my iPhone for things like my recent international flight and at office where there's barely any 3G service, or when I'm on public transport.

I've used Pandora on and off in the past but I didn't particularly care for the songs it was playing. Then I thought why do I need to put up with crappy music I hate when I can have the music I love 24/7 on my iPod/iPhone.

Can someone explain this to me further? Why do you use Pandora or whatnot? Do you use it in parallel with something like an iPod? Do you have thousands of songs or just couple dozen CD's? I tend to listen to a huge variety of music and have some 3000+ tracks that won't even fit on my 32 GB anymore. How do you deal with situations such as international flights, spotty internet, etc? Do you use it just for music discovery?

I tend to keep Pandora around on my 64GB iPhone for a few reasons. As you suggested, I have limited music (partly college student budget, partly friends having such a large volume of music I enjoy), and much of my music is still on CDs. Turning on Pandora and quickly plugging it into my car [for varying definitions of quickly], can often be easier than deciding what album I want to listen to and, given my commute, finish fifteen minutes before I get anywhere.

Pandora also gives me pseudo on-demand access to pop music I might not care to purchase, or to entertain small children.

I have Tune-In radio installed, but haven't really bothered to try it. When I go on flights, I tend to bring audiobooks in advance, and I have my music collection for places where internet is spotty (hiking, etc.).

How do you deal with situations such as international flights, spotty internet, etc? Do you use it just for music discovery?

Spotify also lets you sync playlists to your phone for offline use.

Worth some further details, I think, because it's key. Any playlist you build in Spotify you can mark as "Available Offline." Any songs in these playlists are downloaded to your device when you DO have an Internet connection and therefore available when you don't. I once flew all the time, so I made great use of this.

Like others have mentioned here, I treat Spotify as The World's Largest Listening Station. Anything I find myself repeatedly listening to, I buy. The money I spend on a Spotify subscription I save by buying less albums I regret. You actually end up with a much better, more varied music collection.

If Apple's service truly is more Pandora-like, I probably won't pay much attention.

I'm probably wrong, but isn't this market pretty saturated? I'm a Google whore, but I'm not touching play music because I'm bought into the Spotify ecosystem. It'll have to be really great to convince the change.

Yeah but I've never used Spotify, or at least not beyond the trial. While they may never get you, they got me, and it's much more prominent than Spotify for anyone else considering this kind of service. They'll probably do just fine (as long as they fix their streaming bitrate "issues")

I really wish there was a practical way to make it so that recording studious could license out their music, BUUUUT they had to have the same public fixed price for everyone. If you want stream BMG music, awesome, their price is 1 cent a song for streaming, or whatever. They can't offer a different price to anyone else.

It kills me that the vast majority of the recorded music to exist in the past 50 years is sitting there in a digital format, and you need to have more money than god in order to build a service to access it. Four people who know how to program could offer up a streaming music service, only the licensing and lawyering prevents it from happening. You need to have as much money as Apple or Google to stand half a shot at lawyering up enough to work out a contract, much less pay it

The same is true for cell phones. All of those components are trivial. Any idiot could put together the components to make a home build cell phone, and any silicon valley startup could offer custom built phones with interesting shapes and features loaded with your favorite open source OS at only a marginally larger price than Samsung or Apple. Instead, you need to literally have billions of dollars to jump into the cell phone market field, because if you don't you will be skullfucked by lawyers the second they realize you don't have a 10,000 patents to use defensively.

Lawyers* make me sick. They do vastly more harm to the growth of technology than any luddite, bad education, or lack of science funding could ever dream of doing.

*Half of all US politicians are lawyers, so before pointing to the laws, realize lawyers right the laws that were drafted by lobbyist (who are also generally corporate lawyers).

What you're talking about is compulsory licensing, and it's been used in broadcast radio for decades. It's always puzzled me why it doesn't apply to Internet radio as well, and I suspect it has something to do with the music studios wanting more money than compulsory licensing provides.

Like others have mentioned here, I treat Spotify as The World's Largest Listening Station. Anything I find myself repeatedly listening to, I buy. The money I spend on a Spotify subscription I save by buying less albums I regret. You actually end up with a much better, more varied music collection.

Yup! Unless you're an infrequent music listener or prefer repeatedly listening to the same tracks a ~5-$10/month for a Spotify (or other) music subscription service can be a much better value than paying the same amount to purchase far less music (much of which you're likely to end up listening to less, or not at all, over time). A music subscription can be worth the price if you enjoy being able to choose whatever you like, on a whim, from a diversity of music (if available, of course) without obligation or pressure to pay for all of it. Some of us don't have the budget to satisy our musical interests with ownership alone and appreciate the benefit of how subscriptions help compensate for that.

Remember iMixes in iTunes? Even the most interesting looking ones certainly weren't worth my dropping cash on the spot just for the privledge of listening to them, while something like them included in an Apple "iRadio" service would be a no-brainer temptation.

Once in a great while you'll run across a DJ who has a great ear and will put together playlists or program a station so well it's truly entertaining. I'm thinking of a couple/three LA stations (like the late Deirdre O'Donoghue on KCRW) from back in the day and a couple of San Diego stations programmed by a guy named Michael Halloran -- amazing, great, NEW music. You hated to turn the radio off because of what they might play next.

THAT would catch my attention. Real programming. I had a Sirius space radio and the programming sucked, to be blunt.